Central London 'super council' is part of a ruthless Tory ideology

Merging three central London borough councils is a way of cutting vital public services and centralising political power

Since former Westminster council leader Shirley Porter successfully gerrymandered the borough in the 1980s, Conservatives have little to fear from a Labour minority unlikely ever to dislodge them. Photograph: Tom Vickers/PA

I was at a big north London comprehensive school in the mid-80s when the teaching unions and others were fighting to prevent Thatcher from abolishing the Inner London Education Authority (Ilea). In the Labour-voting inner London boroughs the move was deeply unpopular and we went on marches and strikes. In the summer of 1986 – the year before I was to become part of the first year to start GCSEs – our school was closed for a month because of industrial action, and there were almost no extra-curricular activities throughout my secondary years. Music was an exception, but the music teacher was sometimes called a scab.

I think it is the memory of all this disruption and rage that made me so angry when I learned that the London borough I now live in, Westminster, plans to merge its children's services department with Hammersmith and Fulham nearby. Now, the two councils, along with Kensington and Chelsea, have decided to go the whole hog. A super council, we are told, will be far more efficient, and help to "protect frontline services". As long as it is Conservative councils combining forces, a bigger organisation is a good thing. Local opposition parties including some Lib Dems are incensed by the lack of consultation. None of this was in any manifesto.

Since former Westminster council leader Shirley Porter successfully gerrymandered the borough in the 1980s – shifting local council tenants out of marginal wards and into asbestos-ridden tower blocks with the connivance of paid officials – Conservatives in the borough have little to fear from a Labour minority unlikely ever to dislodge them.

Similarly in Kensington and Chelsea, despite the recent upset of two Conservatives being forced to resign after sending each other inappropriately captioned photographs of children, and the subsequent election of Liberal Democrat Linda Wade, Tories sit on an impregnable majority.

Only in Hammersmith and Fulham, where Labour controlled the council until 2006, is there a real chance that Labour could win – only to find themselves once again in a minority: presumably, if there were to be a disagreement between councillors on the new super council, the Conservative majority would always win. Then again, housing benefit changes set to move thousands of claimants out of expensive central London boroughs make a change of administration even in Hammersmith less likely. Central London, it seems, is to be permanently handed over to the new Thatcherite ideologues.

Because that is what they are. For all the phoney language of compassion that drips from their statements, the crocodile tears about services cut, these councils are hellbent on cutting back on public sector provision, and in some of the areas that need it most. There are wards in north Westminster – a constituency held by Labour's Karen Buck in May to the outrage of her big-spending Conservative challenger Joanne Cash — that are among the poorest in the country. There is some terrible housing and not enough primary schools, but still the financial crisis and impending cuts did not move the Conservative council to cancel its £23,000 banquet in a fancy hotel in March.Nor do the central London Tories seem inclined to follow the advice of communities secretary Eric Pickles to oblige highly paid council staff to take a pay cut.

Westminster council leader Colin Barrow promises "to invest" in the new, volunteer-led services. Yet when north Westminster resident, primary school governor and elected neighbourhood forum chair Angela Singhate met him earlier this month to express concern about the impending shutdown of a social enterprise that has led community development in her neighbourhood, and argued that some transitional funding needed to be in place, he offered not a penny. He promises to keep the city "safe", yet she and other elected residents have worked closely with the police to combat the gang culture that saw the fatal shooting – in what was probably a case of mistaken identity – of Daniel Omari Smith just a few months ago.

Weirdly, when the council published a document designed to show off its "big society" credentials last month, it featured two different gardening projects but made no mention of people like Angela, who has been giving four hours a week of her time for years. Instead, as a shining example of the new people power, Cllr Barrow singled out the story of a market saved "just a stone's throw from the Houses of Commons" – just in case his powerful friends in central government hadn't noticed what he's been up to.

Last weekend, the government's digital champion and web entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox wrote in the Financial Times about her experience of helping a "very old lady through her first experience of the web". Now Westminster council has decided that "silver surfer" internet lessons are an unaffordable luxury. Perhaps in really poor boroughs they might be, but in Westminster, where the press has been filled this week with the battles of celebrity residents including Nigella Lawson over vast basement extensions in Belgravia? Don't older people need to learn to use the internet to shop and pay their council tax if they are, following the new mantra, now expected to take "responsibility for themselves"?

No one in central London doubts that a encouraging greater sense of community and responsibility is a good thing. When I stood as a Green candidate in the May local elections, my pitch was all about strengthening the neighbourhood. Getting people more involved in their local areas, being kinder and politer to each other, helping out in schools or community centres if we have time, is all excellent. But there can be no denying that this is much more difficult and complicated in highly mobile, highly diverse urban populations – where multiple languages are spoken, where people often do not know even their next-door neighbours, where social and financial pressures are really severe. If the state, and its proxies in the London borough councils, care a jot about the people who live in such neighbourhoods, they must, please, cut less ruthlessly.